Back in San
Francisco things were humming. Suzuki's students were an active presence
at Sokoji all the time, in the zendo, kitchen, and office. Yvonne Rand,
Zen Center's full-time secretary, shared an office with Katagiri. Yvonne
was a Stanford graduate. She had met Virginia Baker at a weaving class a
couple of years earlier and had become fast friends with the Bakers.
Before working for Zen Center, she had taught math at a private school.
She was married, had two children, loved plants and animals, had a
natural tendency to help people, and at thirty years old was efficient
and sharp. She was one of those people who Suzuki said were older
students the day they arrived. Once she met Suzuki, Yvonne was happy to
handle Zen Center's secretarial tasks for a pittance, just to be around
him. It was an exciting time to be there, at the birth of a monastery.
Yvonne became a board member virtually overnight too.

Richard would
come into the office, joke around, get an update from Yvonne, and then
be off to Tassajara. Claude was managing five rented apartments across
the street, where zazen students lived and ate communally. Newcomers,
mainly in their twenties, were finding their way up the Sokoji steps to
learn about Zen. With all this activity, the rift between Suzuki's zazen
students and the overwhelmed Japanese-American congregation widened.

Your life in the
hippie age is very different. I think it is very Buddhist-like. Maybe
that is why you like Buddhism. But if you become a Buddhist, your life
will change more--you will become a super-hippie, not a usual one. Your
lifestyle looks Buddhist, but that is not enough. When you have a strict
practice that doesn't ignore the weak points of your practice, then
eventually you will have good practice. More and more you will
understand what Zen masters have said, and you will appreciate their
lives.

There were plenty
of hippies and young people of various descriptions appearing in the San
Francisco streets and the Sokoji zendo. Life at Zen Center was too
formal and disciplined for most of them. Doctrinal disputes were common.
The air was full of ideas about what was spiritual or what was Zen. The
word had a glamour to it and tended to be used freely, as in, "That's
very Zen." People were making Zen into whatever they wanted. A
psychedelic periodical called the San Francisco Oracle had reprinted the
Zen Center's Heart Sutra chant card with an overlay of a naked
woman lying across it. Zen seemed to be the coolest thing going. Zen
Center often acted as an antidote to that assumption--with the silence,
stillness, and alertness of zazen, the almost military crispness of the
group sutra chanting, the disciplined atmosphere in the clean building,
and the subdued dress and short hair of the older students.

"Man, you guys
are uptight," said a long-haired, colorfully dressed young college
dropout smelling of patchouli oil. "The real Zen's on the street,
dancing and getting high. Anyway, your teacher can't be enlightened. He
shaves his head, which means that he had

to have the idea,
'I'm going to shave my head,' which means his mind wasn't in the clear
light."

One student had
spearheaded a drive to start a zendo in the Haight-Ashbury. He'd shown
Katagiri a proposed space in the Straight Theater. Katagiri was used to
hippies, but this was right in the middle of their scene. He told Suzuki
that he didn't think the sort of discipline that was needed to study Zen
could be sustained there.

Students had been
talking to Katagiri and Suzuki about psychedelics since 1965. Of the
two, Suzuki took it more seriously. Many students who'd come to him in
the past few years credited psychedelics with awakening their interest
in Buddhism. He was aware that Richard Baker had organized the first
major LSD conference in the U.S. at the University of California
extension in San Francisco. The student who was promoting the idea of
the Haight-Ashbury zendo urged Suzuki to try LSD, and finally Suzuki
took a capsule of the not-yet-illegal substance from him. A week later
he decided to flush it down the toilet. A reporter for the biggest
underground newspaper in the area interviewed Suzuki at Tassajara; after
five minutes of talking about LSD, he gave up trying to find out what
Suzuki's position was. He said that the best he could come up with was
that Suzuki didn't seem to think it was relevant to anything.

A Stanford
professor told Suzuki that many college students were smoking marijuana
all the time and taking LSD. Maybe it was good in some ways for them to
experiment, but it was interfering with their studies. What did Suzuki
do about this problem? "Oh, nothing," said Suzuki. "I just teach them
how to sit zazen, and they forget about those things pretty soon."

Suzuki would
occasionally mention that he did not want people to come to the temple
while high. At the wedding of a couple who were involved in the
psychedelic scene, he said, "Our way is not to seek some deep
experience. We accept ourselves just as we are. We do not take drugs. It
is superficial." On the whole, though, he seemed quite unconcerned about
drugs and alcohol. He saw more

pernicious
attachments among his students. When he spoke on the precept forbidding
consumption or distribution of alcohol or intoxicants he sometimes gave
it a surprising interpretation. "This means don't sell Buddhism," or,
"This means don't try to give people some medicine, don't boast about
the superior teaching of Buddhism. Not only liquor but also spiritual
teaching is intoxicating."

Allen Ginsberg had come to be
recognized as the poet laureate of the Beat and a hero of the hippie
movement. He had met Suzuki a few times in the early days at the Academy
and around Japantown, then later at a major Berkeley poetry conference
that Richard had organized. In 1963 Ginsberg took an extensive trip to
Asia, during which he investigated Hinduism and Buddhism. In Kyoto he
visited Ruth Fuller Sasaki's temple and sat zazen with his old buddy
Gary Snyder for six weeks at Oda-roshi's temple in the Daitokuji
complex. He was delighted with this first experience of zazen and a
little miffed at Snyder for not introducing him and Kerouac to zazen
years before, when they visited Snyder's Horse Pasture Hermitage in
Marin County, one of the first zendos in the West. Upon his return to
America, Ginsberg meditated at Sokoji a few times in the fall of 1963.
It was a little restrictive for him; he liked to hit cymbals and
spontaneously chant and sing Hindu songs during his meditation, but he
was always appreciative of Zen Center practice and from time to time he
recommended that people go there.

On January 14,
1967, Ginsberg and Suzuki met again. Some students had brought Suzuki to
the Human-Be-In in Golden Gate Park, where tens of thousands of hippies,
fellow travelers, and the curious gathered to celebrate, dance, get
high, and enjoy the sunshine. As usual, Okusan had tried to stop him,
saying he should rest, but it was a free Saturday afternoon and some
students were begging him to go, so he did. Suzuki was welcomed on the
platform, where he sat with Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Gary Snyder, and
the poet Michael McClure, among others. A young woman handed him a god's
eye, a multicolored, hexagonal religious sym-

bol on a stick,
allegedly American Indian in origin. After a while he passed it on, and
someone else gave him a flower. He sat there with the flower and enjoyed
the flower children, the music, and the idealistic speeches. He was
there when Owsley, the manufacturer of Clear Light Acid, parachuted in.
After a while Suzuki excused himself and was taken home. Gary Snyder
told Ginsberg it was significant that he'd come, a recognition that
there was more to the aspirations of youth than hedonism and
foolishness.

In the spring of
1968 Ginsberg returned to Sokoji to ask for permission to use Suzuki's
translation of the Heart Sutra, which he wished to sing in
public. "I've looked at all the translations," Ginsberg said, "and am
most intrigued with yours. It's so succinct." He called the style "telegraphese."
Suzuki hadn't even thought of it as a translation. Ginsberg showed him
the sutra card that the zazen students used at Sokoji to chant the sutra
in Sino-Japanese. There were the romanized syllables, the Chinese
characters, and the basic meanings of the terms in English below that.
Suzuki had never intended the English to be chanted. Ginsberg had
memorized it and created a melody. He sang his version to Suzuki and
asked if it would be all right for him to perform it in public. "Sure,"
said Suzuki enthusiastically. "Please do. You have the right spirit."

An enthusiastic new arrival told
Suzuki-roshi he wanted to move into the temple to be closer to him.
"That would be good," Suzuki said, "but it would make the other students
jealous. So why don't you come to the temple before morning zazen and
we'll clean together?"

The next morning
he joined Suzuki at 4:15, and they cleaned the zendo and halls and
bathrooms till 4:45, when people began to arrive for zazen. They
vacuumed, mopped, and dusted.

One morning as
they were cleaning Suzuki excused himself. Suddenly there came a sound
of knocking and then a voice calling in Japanese. Suzuki was in the
bathroom by his office, brushing what teeth he had left. He went out to
the stairway to see what the racket was. He and the student tried to
locate the source of the

ever-increasing
pounding and yelling. Suzuki opened the door to the basement.

There was Okusan,
full of fury, screaming at him. She'd been locked in all night. The
women's club had met the night before, and they had gone around and
locked up too thoroughly before they left. She'd been taking a bath,
while Suzuki was upstairs reading. Finally he'd gone to sleep not
noticing that she wasn't back. He even got up in the middle of the night
to pee as always, not noticing that she wasn't in her bed and her
sandals weren't at the door. She yelled at him machine-gun fashion.

Suzuki realized
what had happened and began to laugh. He laughed so hard that foam from
the toothpaste ran down from his mouth onto his kimono. The new student
got out of there.

a

The
world of thinking is that of our ordinary dualistic mind.

The
world of pure consciousness or awareness is that of buddha-mind.
Phenomena in the world of thinking are constantly being named or
labeled by our minds. The world of awareness does not label or name,
it only reflects. The world of pure consciousness thus includes the
opposites in the world of thinking.

Alan Watts,
Richard De Martino, and Erich Fromm, among others, had written about Zen
and psychoanalysis. Some psychologists and psychiatrists had taken an
interest in zazen and other forms of meditation. Would it help their
patients? What did it do? How could it help them learn about
consciousness? Dr. Joe *Kamiya of the Langley Porter Institute was doing
tests on meditators. Some of the students at Zen Center had gone to get
hooked up to his electroencephalograph to see how their brain waves
changed when they meditated. A number of students had prolonged states
of alpha with some theta waves, which were correlated with calm states
of mind. Richard Baker and his friend Mike

Murphy from Esalen
Institute produced theta waves for longer periods, characteristic of the
meditation of yogis and Zen masters. Suzuki and Katagiri were wired up
as well. Both of them fell asleep immediately.

Suzuki respected
some aspects of Western psychology and psychotherapy based on what he'd
heard from analysts he'd met, but he didn't claim to understand it and
didn't compare it to Zen. He made it clear that Buddhism was not a
method of self-improvement, but he did speak about body, mind, and will,
revealing his own brand of Buddhist psychology and analysis.

The way to study
Zen is to be always aware of yourself, to be careful, to be sincere with
yourself. Awareness means that when reading, including Zen materials,
your mind should not get caught by any idea. It should remain open.
Similarly with sights and sounds: don't allow your mind's self-awareness
to get lost or absorbed. In other words, always remain conscious of what
you are doing, of what is going on.

A psychiatrist
and researcher named Arthur Deikman had had a life-changing experience
in the early fifties when he began to meditate on his own every day in
the woods. That led to years of clinical experiments involving
meditation. He had been amazed at the results; many subjects (all were
college students) experienced a striking change of consciousness after
only fifteen minutes of sitting and staring at a blue vase. What would
happen to people who did this all their lives? Wanting to find a
qualified meditation teacher, he came to San Francisco to meet with
Shunryu Suzuki, whose name had been suggested by colleagues on the East
Coast.

Deikman brought a
tape recorder, but Suzuki declined to let him use it. He told Suzuki
about his research and said he wanted to understand consciousness
better. Suzuki told him he should go sit a sesshin with Yasutani in L.A.
Not knowing what a sesshin was, Deikman went and returned some weeks
later. He didn't know if Suzuki had sent him because the dates just
happened to be right or out of a mischievous desire to test him or throw
him to the lions.

He'd had amazing
experiences of altered states. At one point his head had seemed to
disappear. At night he'd been awakened by what he thought was someone
smashing blocks together, only to find that it was the person in the
next sleeping bag softly smacking his lips during sleep. While impressed
with what happened working with Yasutani on koans, Deikman continued to
seek out Suzuki. "Where he is is where I want to be," he told his wife,
Etta, "in that place of sanity." They went to Tassajara for the summer.
They worried that their very active younger daughter wouldn't fit in,
but there was no problem. They even took her to Suzuki's lectures, and
Etta marveled at how her child would calm down and fall asleep.

Sometimes in a
lecture Suzuki would say something that seemed to speak directly to
Deikman's conundrums, but more important to Deikman than Suzuki's words
was his attitude, his perspective on the world, his transparency.

From what he'd
seen and heard at Zen Center, Deikman knew that Suzuki wouldn't be
excited by any special states of mind that came up during his zazen.
After a lecture, a student just back from a private thirty-day sesshin
had asked Suzuki how to maintain the state of mind he'd attained.

"Concentrate on
your breathing, and it will go away," Suzuki said.

In another
lecture Suzuki said, "If you're dissatisfied with your zazen, it shows
you have a gaining idea." The next time he talked to Suzuki, Deikman
just told him there seemed to be more clarity, vividness, and intrinsic
value in his experience--thing he could define, but he felt he'd had a
glimpse of Zen. "That might be the case," Suzuki said. But in time
Deikman got discouraged. He experienced these higher states, but they
just passed. What was the use?

Suzuki laughed
and said, "That's right, no use. All these states come and go, but if
you continue, you find there's something underneath."

"You can't have
it, because in the act of having it, it's gone," said Deikman.

"Yes, that's
right," Suzuki answered.

Deikman continued
to come to the West Coast to see Suzuki. As with most people, the reason
he came was not the reason he stayed. He remembered what Suzuki said to
him when he first came to learn more about consciousness: "I don't know
anything about consciousness. I just try to teach my students how to
hear the birds sing."

The true
experience of Zen is not some ecstasy or some mysterious state of mind,
but it is a deep joy that is even more than joy. You may have this true
experience through some change in your mental state. But a change of
mental state is not, strictly speaking, enlightenment. Enlightenment is
more than that. That comes with it, but it is more than that. What we
experience is joy or mysterious experience, but something follows. That
something which follows, besides this experience, is true enlightenment.
So we should not suppose that enlightenment will always be experienced
in terms of consciousness.

a

There
will always be war, but we must always work to oppose it.

One day in
late summer of 1968, Suzuki-roshi and I sat eating hot dogs in front of
the student union at the University of California at Berkeley. Before us
a colorful street scene unfolded--students of every race, jocks and
hippies, professors, businessmen and women, and singing, dancing Hare
Krishna devotees, with backpacks and briefcases, suits and sarongs, long
hair abounding. Suzuki was comfortable amidst the ragged, revolutionary
youth, and they responded well to him. In his brown robes with drooping
sleeves he was immediately identifiable as an ally, not part of the
establishment, and people passing him would smile, nod, or sometimes
bow.

Earlier that day,
I had driven Suzuki in predawn darkness to the

Berkeley zendo so
he could join the morning schedule and give a talk. Mel Weitsman now
lived there and was in charge. We sat around talking till midmorning
when, at Suzuki's request, I had taken him to Telegraph Avenue to visit
the bookstores and walk around.

People were
handing out leaflets promoting Scientology and opposing the war in
Vietnam. From the distance the echoes of an amplified voice approached,
blasting out a message from loudspeakers mounted on a van's roof. They
were calling for the overthrow of the "racist, imperialist,
war-mongering United States government, by any means necessary."

"What do you
think of that, Roshi?" I said. "Most people aren't even paying attention
to it. Quite a country you've come to, huh?"

Suzuki kept
chewing noncommittally.

I told Suzuki how
almost every guy I knew had avoided the draft, some by pretending to be
homosexual or crazy. Many of Suzuki's own students, including Richard
and myself, had used their wiles to escape the draft.

"Roshi, I heard
that you opposed the war when you were in Japan. Is that true?" I asked
him.

"Yes, in a way,
but there was not much I could do. We tried to look at the root cause."

"Did many priests
do that?"

"No, not till
after the war. Then they all did."

"What was it like
then?"

"Japan was under
the spell of some strange idea. There was a lot of confusion."

"How did you get
away with it? How come you weren't arrested?"

"I didn't oppose
the government. I just expressed ideas--like if there were peace, that
the country and also the government would be stronger. And I encouraged
others to think about careless assumptions."

"I heard you
printed things."

"Yes, before the
war--but if you saw what I wrote, you wouldn't understand. Not so
direct. It was different from your situation here." He sighed. "It would
be very hard to explain. You would have to know so much background."

A number of
Zen students had applied for status as conscientious objectors to
military service. Some were doing alternative service in the fire
department at Tassajara. As a result, two FBI agents showed up at Sokoji
one day and interviewed Suzuki. He didn't speak about war and peace in
the clear-cut terms that they were used to hearing from Quakers and
other pacifist Christians, but he did say that Buddhism sought
accommodation rather than conflict, was fundamentally pacifist, and that
it was better for monks not to become soldiers.

Ironically, in
Japan Buddhism had never been pacifist, and all Buddhists supported the
government's wars. When they asked what he thought about the Vietnam
War, he startled them by saying offhandedly, "Oh yes, I have a son in
Vietnam. He's a barber and a mechanic in the U.S. Army. He enlisted. My
wife's worried about him, but I think he needed to get out and do
something." He showed them a letter he'd just received from Otohiro. The
agents finally gave up trying to understand his position. Zen Center
continued to provide support for and be host to conscientious objectors.

Suzuki was
impossible to pin down on most issues and wouldn't support his students'
positions if they were simplistic and one-sided, especially if they
carelessly threw Buddhism into the mix. He encouraged people to take
responsibility for their own actions and not use good deeds as an excuse
to avoid facing themselves, or as a substitute for practice. Suzuki
didn't like hearing the name of Buddhism hastily invoked for noble
purposes any more than he liked Buddhist teachings to be twisted to
serve greed, hate, and delusion, as had happened in Japan during his
lifetime. If students were clear about their motives, he would be
supportive.

"Roshi, can't I
consider my practice to be helping people?" said a woman student after a
lecture. "There are so many people who need help, and there is so much
to be done. I don't have much time left over to sit zazen or go to
Tassajara."

"It is very
difficult to help people," Suzuki answered. "You may think you're
helping them and end up hurting them."

He was
interested in establishing a way of life that created peace, working on
the root cause of war rather than railing against the symptoms. Talking
about karma, he said:

You may foolishly
try to ignore karma, but this will never work, and if you fight it too
much, you will invite destruction that is worse than war. We are
actually creating war through our everyday activities. You talk about
peace in some angry mood, when actually you are creating war with that
angry mood. Ughhh! That is war! We should know. We should open our
dharma eyes, and together we should help each other forever.

In the early
fifties Suzuki had told his young neighbor Yamamura that he longed to go
to America to teach about peace and internationalism. But his American
students were already politically conscious, some of them active, and he
was clearly sympathetic with the peace movement.

In 1960 Suzuki
had enthusiastically supported the decision of a student named Barton
Stone to join a yearlong peace march from San Francisco to Moscow. In
1964, in response to a letter from Barton, Suzuki visited him twice in
prison, where he was serving a year for trying to obstruct nuclear
testing in the Pacific. Later, when Barton got out of jail and visited
Suzuki at Sokoji, Okusan showed him a newspaper clipping from Japan with
a photo of her husband marching with other Buddhist priests. There were
banners and a large crowd. She said it was a march against nuclear
testing in the Pacific.

Suzuki joined
Richard Baker and some other Zen students for a

large
demonstration in the fall of 1968, walking up Market Street in peaceful
opposition to the war. His decision to go may have been influenced by an
emotional exchange he had had with students a few hours earlier.

Suzuki was
back in town from Tassajara. People in the city missed him, and
attendance was high for his Saturday lecture at Sokoji. A young man
named John Steiner, who had studied with Suzuki for two years, was among
those who sat near the front on goza mats. John had been involved in
some of the original protests against the war at UC Berkeley two years
earlier and, like a number of people at the lecture, was planning to
attend the protest march that day. Minds buzzed with thoughts of life
and death, peace and horror, helplessness and hope.

After his talk,
Suzuki asked if there were any questions.

A woman said,
"What is war?"

Suzuki pointed to
the goza mats. They are about three by six feet, big enough for two
cushions. He said that sometimes there are ripples on the rows of straw,
and people put their hands down to push the ripples out after they sit
down. This works okay on the sides, but when there's a ripple between
two people, it won't smooth out; it just moves toward the other person.
Without noticing it, people sometimes push these ripples back and forth
toward each other. "That is the cause of war. Karma starts with small
things, then it accelerates. You should know how to deal with those
small difficulties."

A fellow in the
back spoke up with irritation in his voice. "How come we're meeting here
when there's a war going on out there?"

Suzuki didn't
understand him. John repeated the young man's question more slowly and
clearly: "He said, 'Roshi, how come we're meeting here when there's a
war going on out there?'" Suzuki smiled. John smiled.

Then, as fast as
a cat leaping on its prey, Suzuki jumped off the altar platform and was
behind John with the stick on his shoulder,

loudly saying, "Gassho!"
He started hitting him over and over shouting, "You fools! You fools!
You're wasting your time!" He continued to hit him until John fell
forward on the floor. "Dreamer! Dreamer! What are you dreaming about?"

He got back on
the platform and faced the totally stunned audience, most of whom had
never heard him raise his voice. The normally tannish skin of his face
was white, as he said unconvincingly in a barely audible voice, "I'm not
angry." He caught his breath and continued. "How can you expect to do
anything in the world when you can't even tie your own shoes?"

After the lecture
everyone was fairly quiet. Bob Halpern came up to John and said, "Roshi
told you to gassho. You didn't gassho when he hit you."

Being hit with
the stick isn't a punishment; it's a particular form of communication,
and part of the formality is to bow when one receives the stick. To
gassho shows respect, expresses the unity of shoulder, stick, and hand,
and puts the person in the best position to receive the stick. John had
been so shocked he hadn't done his part in this exchange, even though
Suzuki had yelled at him to gassho.

John went to
Suzuki in his office to apologize for not gasshoing. Suzuki in return
apologized to John very sweetly for being so fierce. John had not
expected anything from Suzuki. He saw what had happened only in terms of
his teacher trying to enlighten him.

"The reason I got
so …" Suzuki said, his sentence trailing off, "is that I was reminded of
what I went through in Japan during the war. It brought up that old
frustration." John saw in his teacher's eyes a glint of pain. Then
Suzuki put his hand on John's shoulder, an unusual gesture for him. The
wide sleeves of Suzuki's robe exposed loose skin hanging down from his
thin arm. John was struck with Suzuki's age and fragility and could feel
his teacher's compassion and suffering.

a

The
teaching given by Shakyamuni Buddha during his lifetime
was accommodated to each disciple's particular temperament, and
to each occasion's particular circumstances. For each case there should
be a special remedy. According to circumstances, there should even be
teachings other than those which were given by Buddha. In light
of this, how is it possible to interpret and pass down an essential
teaching that can be applied to every possible occasion and individual
temperament?

For the
first six years Suzuki was in America, he and his main students resisted
the idea of recording his lectures; what he said was for the moment and
for the people at hand. He wasn't codifying his teaching but working
with people day by day, situation after situation. Nevertheless, in
1965, when she was a new student, Marian Derby started recording
lectures in Los Altos on her reel-to-reel tape recorder with Suzuki's
permission. Also with his permission she transcribed them and made the
transcripts available. Soon after that they started doing the same in
San Francisco.

In the summer of 1966 Marian's
parents came to visit. They wanted to check out this Zen teacher, to see
whom Marian had brought into her home and into the lives of their
grandchildren. They met Suzuki and were delighted with him. Marian's
father drove him back to San Francisco to get to know him better. He
asked Suzuki what his personal ambition in life was, and Suzuki said,
"I'd like to write a book." When her father passed this on, Marian took
it seriously and asked Suzuki if she could put a book together from his
morning talks. He was enthusiastic. So every Thursday morning after the
group left, she'd read to him from her edited transcripts. Marian loved
the way Suzuki would sit with folded legs on her sofa in front of the
crackling fireplace, his robes tucked under his legs, the aroma of
coffee and cinnamon rolls still in the air.

The purpose of
studying Buddhism is not to study Buddhism but to study ourselves. That
is why we have teaching. But the teaching is not ourselves. It is some
explanation of ourselves. To study the teaching is to know yourselves.
That is why we do not ever attach to the teaching, or to the teacher.
The moment you meet a teacher you should leave the teacher, and you
should be independent. You want a teacher so that you can be
independent. So you study yourselves. You have the teacher for
yourselves, not for the teacher.

"Did I say that?"
he'd often comment.

Marian told Suzuki that
Richard was opposed to the idea of her doing the book. He thought she
was too new a student. Suzuki suggested she pass the manuscript on to
Richard so he could edit it. In March of 1967 Marian gave the completed
manuscript to Richard, which she had titled Beginner's Mind. Much
to Marian's frustration, it took him months to get around to looking at
it. When he did read it the following fall, he agreed it was good
material for a book--after more work. Marian let go of the project.
Richard found himself too busy to take it on, so he offered it to a
student named Peter Schneider, who had editing experience. Peter turned
down the task, since he was fully occupied as director of Tassajara.

In the spring of
1968 Richard turned the manuscript over to his good friend Trudy Dixon,
who, like Richard, had edited Suzuki's lectures for Wind Bell.
Trudy took on the task even though she had two small children, had
undergone surgery for breast cancer, and was in poor health. She threw
herself completely into it, listening to the original tapes,
painstakingly working on the material word by word, thought by thought,
organizing it and conferring often with Richard and ccasionally with
Suzuki directly.

Around this time a Zen student
came up to Richard on Bush Street and said he'd heard that Richard was
going to Japan. That's how Richard learned of Suzuki's next plan for
him. He went right in to Sokoji and asked Suzuki about it. Suzuki had a
number of rea-

sons for sending
him. He said he wanted Richard to experience Zen practice in a Japanese
setting and to get a taste of Japanese culture. He wanted him to go to
Eiheiji, study with various good teachers, learn tea ceremony, and go to
Noh plays. Suzuki didn't make it public at the time, but he considered
this a necessary part of Richard's preparation to someday succeed him as
a teacher and maybe even as the abbot of the Zen Center.

Suzuki also said
he wanted to dislodge Richard from his excessive responsibilities and
give other students a chance to run things. Richard was so dominant and
his mind worked so fast that it was hard for others to develop
leadership skills in his presence. Some people, like Silas, would get a
chance to do things without so much conflict and competition with
Richard. In addition, Suzuki did not hide another reason: "I can't
control him," he said, "so I'm going to give him a big problem. I'm
going to throw him in the ocean." The most astonishing purpose that
Suzuki had in sending Richard to Japan was to reform Japanese Buddhism,
one of his lifelong goals. He wanted to bust up the fossilization of Zen
in his homeland with influence from novice American Buddhists, who would
bring a fresh approach. As usual, he never fully explained his vision or
how he saw this sea change in ancient institutions coming about.

Hundreds of
people came to Richard's going-away party. Lou Harrison's Chinese music
ensemble played, followed by Mel Weitsman's recorder trio, and then
there was dancing to a rhythm-and-blues band. Richard and Virginia stood
for a while talking to Suzuki and Okusan. After clowning around,
pretending to dance like the students, the Suzukis went home early.

Many of those
present owed a lot to Richard: he'd gotten them into Tassajara or out of
the draft, helped foreign students stay in the country, helped people
get jobs, and when it was really important arranged for Suzuki to see
them right away. He'd been everywhere at once, and now he was going
away. People wondered what Zen Center would be like without him.

On October 23,
1968, Richard sailed for Japan with his wife, Virginia, and daughter,
Sally. He took with him the completed manu-

script for Zen
Mind, Beginner's Mind, which he had further edited and gone over
with Suzuki. He was going to seek a publisher in Japan, and he wrote the
introduction onboard as the ship headed toward the land of his teacher.

Trudy Dixon had been doing
graduate studies in philosophy at UC Berkeley, specializing in Heidegger
and Wittgenstein, when her husband, Mike, first took her to Sokoji in
1962 to hear Suzuki lecture. Mike was a student at the San Francisco Art
Institute. They arrived late and stood in the back of the zendo. Suzuki
embarked on an unusual line of thought that evening. He compared the
practice of Zen with the study of philosophy--expressing one's truth
with one's whole body and mind instead of thinking and being curious
about the meaning of life. He said he'd had a good friend in Japan who
was a philosopher. Ultimately his intellectual pursuits didn't satisfy
him, and he killed himself. At exactly that point in the lecture, Suzuki
looked intently at Trudy. She backed up a few steps. Trudy could not get
that experience out of her mind. She and Mike continued coming to
lectures and soon decided to start practicing with Suzuki. They became
close disciples.

In Zen Mind,
Beginner's Mind, Trudy put her whole being into expressing the
essence of Suzuki's teaching. After she passed the manuscript on to
Richard, she concentrated on taking care of herself at her home in Mill
Valley and dealing with her approaching death. She remained cheerful on
the outside, but her mind was possessed by fear, which she revealed to
her analyst. After an operation her lungs filled with liquid, and she
couldn't breathe. She struggled for breath with all the energy she could
find until she went beyond thoughts, words, and fear into what she
called breath-struggle *samadhi. After she had undergone five
difficult days of recovery, Mike brought Suzuki and Okusan to visit her.
She said the sight of them was like seeing the sun rise for the first
time.

She went to
Tassajara and fasted. There she had a powerful, joyous experience that
included life and death, health and illness, fear and courage. She said
she finally stopped fighting and was "accom-

modating the
enemy," as Suzuki had described it. On the verge of death Trudy had been
reborn. Her analyst said that at her next visit she seemed like a new
person, a fearless and radiant woman. To her husband, caretakers, and
friends she became an inspiration. "My self, my body," she wrote, "is
dissolved in phenomena like a sky's rainbow caught in a child's soap
bubble."

One day after
zazen at Bill Kwong's Mill Valley zendo, Betty Warren visited Trudy. She
arrived wishing there was something she could do. Trudy burned away
Betty's pity with one phrase, referring to her illness as "this blessed
cancer."

On Mondays Suzuki
visited Trudy at her home after giving a talk to Bill's zazen group. One
day after such a visit he returned to the car with Bob Halpern. Suzuki's
eyes were wet. "Now there's a real Zen master," he said of Trudy, as he
sank into his seat.

On July 1 Trudy's
brother drove her to Tassajara. They shared a cup of clear creek water
with Suzuki, slept outside in the moonlight, and returned the next day
to the hospital. A couple of days later she came back to Tassajara and
practiced zazen lying on her back in the zendo with Suzuki and the
students. On the eighth she and her teacher returned to San Francisco.

On July 9, 1969,
Mike called Suzuki at Sokoji and told him that Trudy had just died in
the hospital--too quickly for Suzuki to have gotten there. Suzuki fell
apart crying on the phone, which disturbed Mike--he thought of Suzuki as
imperturbable. Suzuki came to the hospital and was composed by then.

At Trudy's
funeral two days later Suzuki was uncharacteristically emotional. He
cried and said, "I never thought I'd have a disciple this great. Maybe I
never will again." As is customary, the funeral included an ordination
in which Suzuki-roshi gave his deceased student the precepts. Then he
delivered a eulogy.

Go, my disciple.
You have completed your practice for this life and acquired a genuine
warm heart, a pure and undefiled buddha mind, and joined our sangha. All
that you have done in this life and in your past lives became meaningful
in the

light of the
buddha mind, which was found so clearly within yourself, as your own.
Because of your complete practice, your mind has transcended far beyond
your physical sickness, and it has taken full care of your sickness like
a nurse.

A person of
joyful mind is contented with his lot. Even in adversity he will see
bright light. He finds the Buddha's place in different circumstances,
easy and difficult. He feels pleasure even in painful conditions, and
rejoices. For us, for all who have this joy of buddha mind, the world of
birth and death is the world of *nirvana.

The compassionate
mind is the affectionate mind of parents. Parents always think of the
growth and welfare of their children, to the neglect of their own
circumstances. Our scriptures say, "Buddha mind is the mind of great
compassion."

The magnanimous
mind is as big as a mountain and as wide as an ocean. A person of
magnanimous mind is impartial. He walks the middle way. He is never
attached to any side of the extreme aspect of things. The magnanimous
mind works justly and impartially.

Now you have
acquired the buddha mind and become a real disciple of the Buddha. At
this point, however, I express my true power. …

Then Suzuki let
out a long, mighty roar of grief that echoed through the cavernous
auditorium.

a

When
you try to do something, you lose it, because you are
concentrated on one out of one thousand hands. You lose 999
hands. Before you try, you have it.

Abruptly, a demand had come
from Sokoji's board of directors in the spring of 1969: choose us or
them. Suzuki had

hoped the two
groups would grow together and learn to coexist in harmony, but the
divide between them had only grown deeper. Students were no longer
invited to the congregation's festive events, except for a few old
timers like Claude, Betty, and Della. Suzuki still thought rapprochement
was possible, but the board was firm.

They no longer
wanted a priest with divided loyalties. They wanted Suzuki to stay, but
even more they wanted a priest who was theirs. Their new temple wouldn't
be built for years--and they did not wish to rent the zendo to Zen
Center anymore. There were too many students; Zen Center had become too
big and busy and was completely overshadowing the Japanese congregation.
While some of the congregation members respected the students'
sincerity, many didn't feel at home in their own temple. The old
caretaker, who never had a smile for anyone, and whom some students were
afraid of, was the most outspoken supporter of the students. Suzuki's
close friend George Hagiwara, now president of the congregation, was
supportive of Suzuki as well, but he knew it was a lost cause.

Suzuki said,
"Eighty percent of the problem is long hair and unusual clothing." The
younger Japanese members were more understanding, but the elders ran
Sokoji. He said that the Issei, the first-generation Japanese-Americans,
had a Meiji Buddhist approach. They admired the progress of the West,
yet clung to a type of Shinto nationalistic Buddhism focused on making
offerings to the spirits of ancestors. Suzuki said he came to America to
bring "the pure way of Zen Buddhism."

*Rumi Kawashiri,
whose family belonged to Sokoji, wrote a college paper called "Sokoji
and Zen Center" that year. Suzuki told her that he taught his Zen Center
students the fundamentals of Buddhism, while his intent with the
congregation was to point out the folly of their "mixed-up understanding
and strong attachment to their own views and way of life." That didn't
increase his popularity. He was harder on them than he had been on his
congregation back at Rinso-in. Suzuki further said that the best hope
for the congregation was "in the Sunday school and with the young in gen-

eral." The youth
liked him, but they were not enthusiastic about Zen. As in Japan, they
thought Zen was for old folks and ancestors. He wouldn't give up on pure
Zen, so the congregation gave up on him.

At the board
meeting Suzuki didn't say anything in his own defense.

One relatively
new member, a man who didn't often come to the temple, expressed an
interest in being president of the Japanese congregation. Suzuki thought
the man was getting in over his head and encouraged him to reconsider.
The man responded by spearheading the move to oust Suzuki, bringing
things to a head. Suzuki gave up, saying that maybe it was better to
defer to those who wished him to leave. He confided to his disciple
Peter Schneider that he had finally been given an excuse to quit.

Katagiri offered
to stay on, but he was told that if he planned to continue working with
the Zen students, the congregation didn't want him, so he resigned with
Suzuki. Okusan was distraught, but George Hagiwara told her it was all
for the best and not to worry.

One evening after zazen, Bob
made up some reason to stay and talk with Suzuki. Suzuki served Bob tea,
confiding that he was having a hard time writing to his old supporter
Gido at headquarters, the man who'd sent him over and one of the few who
he felt understood what he was doing. He wanted to send a letter of
resignation and didn't know what to say.

Bob suggested
that Suzuki call him on the phone right then. It was a novel idea to
Suzuki. He reached Gido, talked to him for a few minutes, and got his
blessing. Afterward he got out some special manju and gave Bob all he
wanted.

a

We
should follow the original way of Zen, which goes
beyond Tassajara practice or city practice.

At a general meeting of the
membership, it was decided that Zen Center would look for its own place,
with all the problems that would entail. Suzuki asked Claude and Silas
to look for a residential building for the Zen Center since they both
dealt in the worlds of business and property. Suzuki would soon retire
from his position at Sokoji to concentrate on working with his students
and disciples. Eventually Claude and Silas found such a place.

At the corner of
Page and Laguna Streets in San Francisco's Western Addition stood a
handsome, three-story, redbrick building. It had been a Jewish women's
residence called Emmanuel. In the summer of 1969 it was for sale.
Claude, Silas, and Suzuki walked up the steps and between two columns to
a solid, double front door with upper panes of thick, translucent glass.
An older woman invited them in. The entryway had a high ceiling and
opened into a wide hall with benches. A chandelier and sconces were
unlit, but indirect light entered through the windows from a courtyard
garden. To the left of the entryway were offices, and to the right was a
large room lined with arched double windows. The building was
magnificent, spacious, sturdy.

"Let's get it,"
Suzuki said, and he started looking around.

The next time
they went to the building on Page Street, fifty other students joined
them to view their prospective home. They all walked the fifteen blocks
together. It was perfect, ready to go without any remodeling. There was
a large dining room and a vast meeting room in the basement that could
be used as a zendo right away. Everyone was impressed with the quality
of the details--the built-in wooden cabinets and trim, the ironwork, and
the view from the walkway on the roof.

This gracious
building had been designed by Julia Morgan, the architect of Hearst
Castle and many other acclaimed buildings in California.

Marian Derby and
Chester Carlson, a founder of Xerox and the single largest donor toward
the purchase of Tassajara, provided the

down payment, and
the Bank of Tokyo offered generous financing. Starting with the first
month, all payments were met by modest resident rents and members' dues.

On November 15, 1969, students
helped Suzuki and Okusan carry their few possessions to the waiting
cars, and they said goodbye to the home they'd lived in, he for ten and
a half years. An official stepping-down ceremony would take place later,
but on this day he offered incense at Sokoji's altars, bowed to the
building from the sidewalk, and rode away. Okusan was sobbing, feeling
rejected. They had tried so hard to take good care of Sokoji and the
congregation.

The Page Street
building had residential space for up to seventy-five people, large
communal bathrooms, and a second-floor suite that was perfect for the
Suzukis, with three rooms and a bath. Most of the students who had been
living in the apartments across the street from Sokoji moved in. At last
Suzuki had the residential center in San Francisco that he'd been
talking about since he came. There was a lot left to do--tatamis and
bells to buy, altars to build, walls to paint (especially the zendo
walls, which had a candy-cane motif). Hagiwara personally provided
ceremonial equipment for the buddha hall.

At five
pm Suzuki walked slowly
down the wide central stairway, followed by a student carrying a burning
stick of incense held high. After offering incense at simple altars in
the kitchen, the buddha hall, and the basement zendo, Suzuki and his
students sat zazen together. Not one period had been missed in the
transition. First things first.

We say our
practice is the ornament of Buddha. Even though students don't know what
Buddhism is, if they come to some beautiful buddha hall then they will
naturally have some feeling. But essentially, for Zen Buddhists, the
real ornaments of the buddha hall are the people who practice there.
Each one of us is, should be, a beautiful flower. And each of us should
be Buddha leading people in our practice.

In January
1970, the new zendo was officially opened and named the *Mahabodhisattva
Zendo. On the main floor, near the front door, the white-walled,
arch-windowed buddha hall contained a fine maple altar built by a
student. The room was covered with tatami, except for an aisle of the
original reddish tile around the edge. Over a hundred students now
resided in the neighborhood of Page and Laguna, and people drove in from
around the Bay Area for zazen and visits. There were four zazen periods
a day, three services, two meals in the dining room. Everyone
participated in meal preparation, dishwashing, and building cleanup.
They had a library, a laundry room, and a shop. Claude said he was
almost embarrassed to be in such comfortable surroundings.

The old students
should lead the new students so they can practice our way more easily,
but without telling them this way or that way, you should do this or you
shouldn't do that. And our daily life in this building--extended from
our zazen practice--should include a good relationship with our
neighbors. Someone may have a beautiful nose, but it should not be fixed
upside down.

To practice being
good neighbors, sangha members swept the sidewalks daily and planted
trees. As on Bush Street, students were asked not to jaywalk. A
neighborhood association had formed, and Suzuki suggested that only one
or two members of Zen Center join it and mainly listen at the meetings.

The students,
many of them idealistic, college-educated, young liberal do-gooders, now
found themselves learning how to live in a predominantly black
neighborhood, on the edge of one of the most dangerous areas in San
Francisco. Japantown had also been near the Fillmore, but it was safer
and had provided a type of invisible support. In this new neighborhood
there were muggings, even murders. Catty-corner from the new building
was a grocery store that sold canned goods, cigarettes, and liquor. The
Chinese proprietor had died in a robbery there, and his wife had shot
and killed two robbers since then, one of them soon after the Zen Center
moved into the neighborhood.

The Zen practice
at Page Street had nothing to offer the poor, disenfranchised
neighbors--no money, no self-defense, no visible power. It was hard to
figure out how to be helpful. Some neighbors complained that these
newcomers made it harder to park. They were being called rich,
self-involved hippies who didn't care about the problems of the local
poor.

The sangha
quickly learned that the doors to the building had to be locked.
Neighborhood children figured out right away that the Zennies were
suckers. They would roam the building at will. Things were stolen. One
day three tough black teenagers came in the open door and were having
fun being sassy to a few students who were trying to be good,
nondiscriminating liberals. Suzuki approached in his robes, carrying his
short teacher's stick.

"Hey, the man in
the robes. You know karate? You fight?" one of the teenagers demanded.
Suzuki's eyes lit up and he walked right up to them--short,
unthreatening, yet full of spunk. "What's the stick for?" the biggest
one asked.

"To hit you
with," said Suzuki, and whacked him on the shoulder. Then he escorted
the boys to the front door, while they laughed and sparred with him.

a

My
original motivation in coming here was not only
to propagate Zen in America, but also to revitalize Zen
in Japan. They are sleeping.

Peter Schneider and Suzuki were
hunched over a couple of sheets of paper. "Shunryu Suzuki, Curriculum
Vitae" was written in large letters at the top of the first. With
Kobun's help Suzuki had reluctantly prepared a chronicle of his
externally significant achievements for Peter, whom he had also
reluctantly allowed to interview him about his past. Peter, Zen Center's
historian, had been editing Wind Bell and was considering doing a
book on Suzuki someday.

The curriculum
vitae was a pretty dry document. There was a line or two each for public
schools, Komazawa University, Eiheiji and Sojiji monasteries. It listed
his years at Zoun-in and Rinso-in and positions he'd held at various
other temples, and it mentioned the certificate he'd received--to teach
ethics and English. It was all new to Peter, who was asking Suzuki
various questions. Suzuki was not very interested. His mind wandered, he
was not always articulate, and he made little mistakes with dates and
details.

Peter kept trying
to figure out when his teacher had become a Zen master. Ten times during
the interview he asked. Suzuki would point to the résumé and say, "Here,
no maybe there," or he'd get back to the previous topic. Any priest in
Japan who had completed his training would be considered a master to his
disciples. There was no word in Japanese that corresponded to the way
"Zen master" was used in America. In Japan the title "roshi" was a
formality, but good teachers were known by reputation or personal
experience.

Suzuki's omissions in recalling his
life were notable. He hardly mentioned his family. He talked about how
his second and third marriages were opposed by some Rinso-in members,
referring to them as his first and second marriages. He never wanted to
talk about his past unless he thought it would help in some way. It was
unimportant, private, and sometimes embarrassing.

What Suzuki
enjoyed talking about most was Nona Ransom. When Peter asked about her,
Suzuki started laughing and said, "I must tell you about Miss Ransom.
She was my old, old girlfriend." He said she gave him the confidence to
teach Westerners. She had died, and he was sad about it. He regretted
that for the past few years he hadn't answered her letters.

I thought it might
be all right not to write her, but that was my mistake. She passed away
last year. I trusted her very much and she trusted me so much, so I
thought whether I wrote to her or not didn't make much difference. But
now I don't know. As long as she was alive it seemed all right. Now I
regret a little not writing to her.

After Suzuki had
talked a good deal about his struggle to become abbot of Rinso-in, Peter
asked about the use of the material.

Peter: Do
you think it would be interesting, Roshi, for the students to know all
this, or is it best to keep your biography very simple?

Suzuki:
Maybe so. It doesn't make much sense though. I'm afraid if they don't
understand what was going on in the background, it will just confuse
them.

Peter: I'm
trying to decide how much should be included from your history. It's
interesting to your students, but also maybe …

Suzuki: No!
Maybe interesting for someone who is not a student. Because of these
kinds of experiences I decided to come to America. There's nothing
interesting in all this. This is just a record, just confusion. My life
in Japan was spent fighting, in struggle. Fortunately I knew how to
handle the problems most of the time, but fighting just made for more
difficulties. I was a very impatient and angry person, and I always
started fights because of my impatience. Once I started to fight, I had
to become very patient or else I'd lose that fight and it would be
endless. I always won the struggles, but that is not the best way. It is
better to surrender. [pause] If I had known the truth about American
life earlier, it would have been sayonara to Japan a long time ago. Like
this, you know [waving goodbye].

In answering a
question about patience, Suzuki got a little impatient and expressed his
frustration with the whole point of looking at his past.

Suzuki:
It's a big job talking about all this. I'm not interested. I have no
accurate record of my life, and I don't want any.

Peter: Is
there any meaning at all in having something about you in the Wind
Bell?

Suzuki: This sort
of thing?

Peter: Some
sort of history, some biography, not too elaborate, but something. Not a
book though. Maybe about four or five pages? Is that a mistake?

Suzuki:
Four or five!

Peter: How
much do you think? One? Half a page? A paragraph? One sentence? What
about your biography saying only, "I do not think much of this sort of
thing and have not kept any records." End of biography. How do you feel
about this?

Suzuki: I
didn't get answers to these kinds of questions from my teacher. I don't
have much interest in it either. If my life is seen in this way,
everything will be lost.